Who I Am:

• I am Steven Johnson, active mapper since 2008
• I am currently an organizer for the TeachOSM project.
• I teach geography & OpenStreetMap techniques at GWU Geography.
• I often map around WashingtonDC with MappingDC, though not as often as I’d like.
• Here are my HDYC stats and my YOSMHM heatmap.

Why I OpenStreetMap:

• High granularity of features, supports mapping at a human scale. Some places have a very rich set of very detailed features. The growth in #sidewalk channel indicative growth in mapping at a hyperlocal level.
• Descriptive and flexible tagging schemes for those odd features and how we tag things to keep them found and useful. There are some thoughtful and measured chats going on the #tagging channel.
• OpenStreetMap is nearly ubiquitous, accessible, and available to virtually anyone with some kind of device, worldwide. Which never ceases to amaze me.
• OpenStreetMap is an unparalleled tool for teaching geography. No other tool offers direct access to geographic techniques at a comparable price. Armchair mapping and field mapping encourage development of skills in spatial reasoning and abstraction, location awareness, and how to read the landscape. This informs much of my motivation for the TeachOSM project.
• A sense that OpenStreetMap is as much about democratizing information and investments in digital citizenship as it is about mapping.

What I hope to do:

OpenStreetMap is a maturing project and the OSM-US organization is maturing with it. My hope is that these will lead to increased capacity to respond to the needs of a growing community. With the on-boarding of an executive director, we will have greater capacity as an organization. With this increased capacity, OSM-US has opportunity expand our programming, build an inclusive community of users, and collaborate to refine our ecosystem of mapping tools.

Here are three key priorities for 2019:

1. Strategic Planning - Support the executive director in development of a strategic plan for OSM-US including fundraising, programming, and communications. Having a strategic plan to inform our programming decisions will help us step up member services and give as a mechanism to better respond to our community.

2. Community development - Broaden participation in small towns, rural areas, community liaisons, target mapping opportunities. I’d like to revive the notion of having local or regional groups to provide a focal point for mappers that may be dispersed across large areas. I also see libraries and librarians as an under-served vector for expanding the open mapping community. I’d also like to see us do more with the OSM Welcome Mat as a full-service onboarding site.

3. Education - Use education as an outreach and community development strategy, specifically to train the next generation of mappers and to develop an inclusive community. TeachOSM has trained over 350 high school & college teachers and has had great success at workshops pairing experienced local mappers with teachers and local librarians as anchors to a local network.

I was recently invited to participate in planning events for Geography Awareness Week[1]. I’m really excited about this opportunity for several reasons. First, the OpenStreetMap community has a lot to offer in terms of mapping as an activity. We have many excellent technologists, a superb platform, a community that spans the globe, -all of which we can offer in support of promoting geographic awareness and education.

Secondly, this is a chance for a more formal collaboration between the OpenStreetMap community and National Geographic (NGS), Association of American Geographers (AAG), and the National Council of Geographic Educators (NCGE) and help them incorporate OpenStreetMap into their programs.

Please visit the Geography Awareness Week page for complete information.

And consider signing up on the [wiki page] (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/GeographyAwarenessWeek) to sponsor an event.

Who Am I?

Hello, I’m Steven Johnson based in Arlington, VA. I’ve been active in the OSM project since 2008, played a part in organizing the US Chapter, and served on the inaugural board in 2010. I’m active in organizing mapping parties and editathons mostly in the Washington, DC area, and mostly through MappingDC. In the last year, I organized an OSM working group within the US Census Bureau and have been conducting mapping parties as part of an effort to establish a partnership between OSM and the Census Bureau.

Here is why I’ve decided to run again:

• Forging relationships between government agencies and OpenStreetMap is becoming increasingly important. Collaborative relationships between OSM and agencies can reduce the risk inherent in data imports as well as generate interest in OSM. Plus, I believe that a cadre of citizen mappers have a key role to play in building strong, public institutions. Many local governments cannot afford to collect the level of detail we put into OpenstreetMap, so the map is an ideal place for public agencies and citizens to collaborate.

• Closely related to the above, I want to solidify the relationship between the OSM project and the US Census Bureau. The OSM community is one of the largest constituencies for Bureau data (specifically, TIGER) and having a liaison benefits both the Bureau and OSM. Also, the value of OSM to the Bureau’s operations has barely been explored. I have been able to expose many in the Bureau to OpenStreetMap and help them identify ways it can benefit Bureau operations. I very much want to continue this advocacy.

• Education and outreach is a growing focus of mine, particularly as a means to increase the diversity of the OpenStreetMap community. I’d like to initiate efforts to get OpenStreetMap taught to middle- and high-school students so we cultivate a stream of new mappers to the project as well as interest students in geography and their environment. I could contribute to a curriculum, like ‘Learn OSM’ or conduct trainings and seminars.

• Lastly, I love mapping! I want to continue to increase the utility of the map. I maintain an active focus on improving address quality and road connectivity (to support routing). Arlington, VA is my ‘garden’, where I have added and maintain all the public buildings, parks, and facilities to the map as well as a great number of commercial establishments.

• Lastly, I’m excited to work with this great slate of candidates!

One way to judge the utility of a base map such as OpenStreetMap is by how well public institutions are represented. To that end, I’ve taken it upon myself to map all of the public facilities in Arlington, VA. I recently completed mapping all of the public schools (and quite a few private ones). This coming weekend’s editathon I’ll complete the addition of firehouses, police stations, and libraries. Parks and community centers may take more time and research, as there are many more of them than there are other facilities. But soon, all of Arlington’s public facilities/institutions should be represented on the map.

I’ve been digitizing a lot of building footprints and parking lots in the last week or so, in preparation for an upcoming mapping party in Falls Church, VA. User [OpenBrian] (http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/OpenBrian) has advocated this technique as a means for making the editing/tagging phase of the mapping party more productive. The theory (I think) is that it simplifies the process of transfering field notes onto some pre-existing geometric shape. I’m beginning to see that it maximizes the effectiveness of arm-chair mapping as well, since even the most familiar of landscapes have easily-overlooked details that require a site visit.

So, to test this out I’ve added a considerable amount of detail to commercial and institutional buildings along Lee Highway starting in Falls Church and proceeding east into Arlington. I typically add the building footprint, adjacent parking lots and parking aisles. Later I’ll add business/institutional names, addresses, and other useful information as time permits, typically one or two at a time.

Westover is a neighborhood in Arlington, VA which has a vibrant, little commercial strip that serves as a hub for the community. Today, I finished adding all the commercial and institutional (bank, library, post office) services along the commercial strip. Each item added includes street address and name of the business/service. Now, on to the rest of Arlington...!

I posted to Talk-US but thought I might also announce it here: a mapping party is in the works 2 - 3 October in Raleigh/Cary. If you're in the area, please bring your GPS (or Walking Papers) and come out!

Where are we going to be mapping? There will be 2 main areas:
Saturday: Downtown Raleigh and close-in neighborhoods (NCSU, Meredith College, Cameron Village, etc.)
Sunday: Research Triangle/Cary, including American Tobacco Trail

Meetup:
Saturday: 11 AM at DH Hill Library on the NCSU campus (http://osm.org/go/ZYRUudNUJ-- ) (Parking info: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/directions/dhhill/)

Sunday: 11 AM at Triangle J Council of Governments, 4307 Emperor Blvd, Durham, NC 27703 (http://osm.org/go/ZS_oux0l )

We'll map in the field for a couple hours, return to the meetup locations for upload and import, then adjourn in the late afternoon to a nearby watering hole/restaurant.

Do I have to attend on both Saturday and Sunday? No, only do as much as you would like.

Where do I sign up? Here: http://trianglemapping.eventbrite.com

After you sign up, EventBrite service will send you a ticket for the event that you can safely ignore. We just want to get a head count.

Hope to see you there!

This week, I'm adding a number trails, waypoints, and other points of interest in and around Acadia National Park in Maine. I've been using the MapZen application, mostly for quickly collecting waypoints of commercial establishments and using the Garmin GPS Map 60CXS for collecting the tracks of trails, and more remote waypoints. Most of this area was part of the original TIGER import, so I've been correcting the alignment of many linear features and bringing the road names into agreement with the OSM model.

One quick update: many of the carriage roads in Acadia National Park, and (astonishingly) some of the hiking trails, were originally part of the TIGER import. While I have updated the alignment and corrected the topology and connectivity of these features, I have kept the original TIGER tags, but changed the tag TIGER_reviewed=yes.

The MappingDC group sponsored a mapping party today at Manassas Battlefield Park west of Washington,DC. We'll be uploading our traces and editing these over the next few days. In addition to mapping trails, we collected waypoints for many historical/cultural landmarks such as cannon batteries, monuments, and ruins. This is one area where the OSM tag set needs to be extended to accommodate these kinds of features.

http://mappingDC.org/

Uploaded a slew of GPS traces that have been accumulating for a year or more. Most of these are in and around Washington,DC, Virginia, and North Carolina and have varying degrees of positional accuracy, depending on whether the trace is a footpath or interstate highway.

I've also entered some hiking trails in Pisgah National Forest (NC) for Black Balsam Knob and Graveyard Ridge. Black Mountain crest is pending. Also added some hiking trails in the Shenandoah National Park. Specifically, Rose River Falls and Dark Hollow Falls. Still have to enter some segments of Appalachian Trail in same vicinity.